It depends

My dad doesn’t wear XXL underwear; I just wanted to share how amused the model is. “Shucks, would you look at that!”

Have you seen the packaging on adult diapers?

First off, they're called "incontinence underwear." And I guess that makes sense when you think about it; God knows there have probably been a couple of unfortunate Google searches redirecting to Craigslist “looking for” postings, if you get my drift.

The models are handsome men in their mid to late 50s on the packaging. There they are, folding their arms, crisp undershirts neatly tucked in their tighty whities. They all have giant, shit-eating grins.

They don't show a stuttering 91-year-old Chinese man asleep on a couch.

Mom calls me every day complaining that she has to clean it up and wash his pants on a daily basis. "It stinks," she complains to me on the phone. "Sometimes it makes me not want to be alive anymore, dealing with his dirty underwear."

She doesn't literally mean that, except for the days she does.

"Did I tell you what your father did the first time you bought it for him?"

"Not at all," I say.

"He cut out the padding!"

I feign shock. In truth, I am lying; she’s told me this no less than three times, but I humor her because who else is she going to tell this story to? And honestly, it gives me an opportunity to imagine my Dad; an old man spending 45 minutes looking for the pair of mom's cloth scissors, then using his walker to return to his bedroom, gingerly removing the padding with shaking hands behind closed doors.

"Why did he do that?" I ask.

"Because he said it wasn't comfortable. He had a nerve to cut it out because it wasn't comfortable!"

Back in his bedroom, I imagine Dad slowly putting on his underwear, the smug look on his face the same smug way he told me he didn’t have any memory problems because his doctor told him he was fine, physically. "Yeah, that's right," he says to himself. "I'll show them who the boss is around here." The boss, of course, being his own fucking bodily functions.

"I lost it," Mom continues. "I threatened to divorce him, right then and there."

"For a second time?" I wanted to ask. But I didn’t. Even if it were in English, I didn't dare.